Danish director Lars von Trier - maker of The Idiots and Dancer in the Dark - is no stranger to controversy but his new movie Dogvile, starring Nicole Kidman, surpasses any of his previous provocative works.

Kidman plays a young woman hiding from gangsters in Dogville

Halfway through Dogville's harrowing third hour, Nicole Kidman's character finds herself raped repeatedly while wearing a dog-collar and chained to a mill wheel.

The glamour of Hollywood must have seemed a long way away for the Moulin Rouge star, but her humiliations have resulted in one of the year's most unsettling films and a drama sure to outrage as much as it impresses.

Dogville is set in an isolated township in the Rocky Mountains during the Prohibition era. But Von Trier - who refuses to fly - made the film entirely in his home country.

Not only that, but he did so entirely within the confines of one huge soundstage, with chalk marks on the floor denoting buildings, roads and scenery.